‘Management systems required for rivers’
Dehradun, June 8
Himmotthan Society, Dehradun, in assistance with International Rivers, USA, and the WWF-India, organised a workshop on ‘Environmental Flows’ in Dehradun today.

Haridyesh accused of shielding culprits of Rudrapur riots
Dehradun, June 8
Members of the minority community from the riot-hit Rudrapur have demanded the resignation of state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Indira Haridyesh accusing her for being soft on those responsible for the riots. They have also demanded a CBI probe into the incident.

Members of the Muslim community protest at Gadarpur on Friday against the move of the Uttarakhand government to delay action
against the alleged culprits of the Rudrapur riots.

Assembly Session
Motion to draw attention towards plight of policemen
Dehradun, June 8
While moving a motion to reduce the amount of a financial grant made for police and jail heads, Mussoorie MLA Ganesh Joshi drew attention of the House towards the lack of promotional avenues for constables.

Session a waste of time: UKD (P)
Dehradun, June 8
President of the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (Panwar) Trivender Panwar has termed the current Assembly session as a waste of time and money. He said the state government called it a budget session while only 10 minutes were spared to clear the budget.

CII delegation visits industries in Pantnagar
Dehradun, June 8
The Uttarakhand State Council of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) took an 18-member delegation to TATA Motors Ltd, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, Minda Corporation Ltd and Delphi-TVS Diesel Systems Ltd at the Pantnagar industrial complex today.

A delegation of the Confederation of Indian Industry during a visit to Industrial
units at Pantnagar on Friday.

Separate vending zone planned in Haridwar
Haridwar, June 8
After facing problems in managing regular festive baths, fairs, Kanwar mela and Maha Kumbh-Ardh along with problems of congested roads and encroachments by vendors-hawkers, finally the administration has started the process for a separate vending zone in
Haridwar.

Documentary on Mussoorie released by singer
Mussoorie, June 8
A bilingual documentary titled 'I Am Mussoorie' dedicated to tourists was released by eminent singer from the state, Meena Rana, at a simple function in Mussoorie today.

Almora Nagar Palika workers end strike
Pithoragarh, June 8
Municipal council workers have called off their 18-day strike in support of demand for salary and arrears, chairperson of the Almora Nagar Palika Shobha Joshi said here today.

Teachers under the Zila Prerak Siksha Union taking out a march on pay anomalies in Haridwar on Friday. Tribune photo: Rameshwar Gaur

Bahuguna assures revision of minimum wages
for workers
Dehradun, June 8
Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna today assured the House that a committee would be constituted for carrying out revision of minimum wages for workers working in industrial areas and these wages would be higher than all the states.

Centre raises kerosene quota for state
Dehradun, June 8
The Centre has increased the quota of kerosene for the state. According to sources, an increase of 1,500 kl per quarter has been done for the state.

70 women booked for obstructing traffic
Pithoragarh, June 8
The police in Almora and Pithoragarh has booked 70 women and registered cases against them under various sections of the IPC for obstructing traffic on highways to protest shortage of LPG cylinders, sources said.

Labourer kills wife in Raipur
Dehradun, June 8
Shobha Devi, wife of Ram Kumar, a labourer from Bihar, was killed by her husband at night at their house at Balawala in Raipur. Kumar, in an inebriated state, killed his wife on a provocation with some sharp-edged weapon. He is absconding since night. The police has handed over his three little children to a relative of Kumar.

Dehradun, June 8
Himmotthan Society, Dehradun, in assistance with International Rivers, USA, and the WWF-India, organised a workshop on ‘Environmental Flows’ in Dehradun today.

Welcoming the participants, Dr Malavika Chauhan, Executive Director, Himmotthan Society, said the workshop had been organised to understand the science and politics of environmental flows, because it is being currently used in environmental decision making on rivers in the country.

Dr Ravi Chopra of the People’s Science Institute, Dehradun, began by examining the history of river conservation through Kashyap’s principles. Dr Latha Anantha, River Research Centre, Kerala, spoke about the necessity of environmental flows. She exhorted the participants to consider the cumulative aspect of the many interventions planned across the rivers of India. Parineeta Dandekar from South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), spoke of the various environmental flow assessment methods in vogue today. She suggested that free-flowing rivers and controlled rivers require separate management systems.

The World Wildlife Fund for Nature-India (WWF) conducted an environmental flows assessment of the upper stretch of the Ganga. This experience was shared by Nitin Kaushal and Suresh Babu of the WWF. They explained the method used, the recommendations, and the lessons learnt from that process.

The post-lunch session included discussions on the impacts of dams in the Himalayas. Himanshu Thakkar of SANDRP explained that the cumulative impact of a stretch of dams is more that the sum of the impact of each dam taken singly. When impact assessments are done for individual dams, citizens lose sight of the fact that taken together, all the dams imply the death of the basins they are located in. However, the cumulative impact assessments as done today do not solve the problem, Thakkar pointed out.

Dr Bharat Jhunjhunwala discussed the cumulative impact assessment of aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity in Alakananda and Bhagirathi basins conducted by Wild Life Institute of India. The difference between a true cumulative impact assessment that looks at the basin as a whole, and a joint report of a series of individual project reports was also highlighted.

Dehradun, June 8
Members of the minority community from the riot-hit Rudrapur have demanded the resignation of state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Indira Haridyesh accusing her for being soft on those responsible for the riots. They have also demanded a CBI probe into the incident.

Four persons were killed and a number of shops were looted and burnt during the communal riots at Rudrapur on October 2, 2011.

The members of the community held protest demonstrations at Rudrapur and Gadarpur today. In a memorandum submitted to Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna, they alleged that the minister had been trying to shield those behind the Rudrapur riots.

By giving an assurance to the state Assembly that the Rudrapur riots cases would be withdrawn, the minister had exposed her "soft corner" for officials behind the riots, they added.

The members further alleged that Rudrapur BJP MLA was directly involved in the riots. The government was taking no initiative to punish other police and administrative officials who were also involved in the incident, they alleged.

Dehradun, June 8
While moving a motion to reduce the amount of a financial grant made for police and jail heads, Mussoorie MLA Ganesh Joshi drew attention of the House towards the lack of promotional avenues for constables.

Speaking during the motion, which was later accepted by the Speaker, Joshi laid emphasis on strengthening the force that was ill-equipped and said to make the police fighting fit, they should be provided the best arms and greater career avenues. “There are lack of promotional avenues at the level of constables, who do round the clock duties; we need to keep up their morale by increasing promotional avenues,” said Joshi.

At the same time BJP MLA Sanjay Gupta also stressed on the need to make the police responsive and not resort to strong-arm tactics. While BJP MLA Raj Kumar Thukral drew the attention of the House towards the alleged reinstatement of SSP, Udham Singh Nagar, even when enquiry was pending against him.

Similarly, while discussing the financial grants for Excise Department, BJP MLA Madan Kaushik criticised the government for tinkering partly while adopting the excise policy of the BJP government. “The government's decision to change the timings of liquour shops' opening them early at 10 am and closing them at 9 pm was the main reason behind rising agitation against presence of liquor shops in the state,” he informed the House.

The Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Indira Hriyadesh, today assured the House that an arrangement would be put be in place whereby scheduled power cuts were announced through papers beforehand.

Replying to a notice under rule 58 submitted by BJP MLA Pushkar Dhami, who pointed out the 6-10 hours of power cuts occurring in Udham Singh Nagar, and said the government should put in place a system whereby the daily power cut was announced beforehand through newspapers.

While replying to the notice under rule 58 submitted by BJP MLA Rajesh Shukla, the minister informed the House about shortage of staff.

“In 59 CHCs, there are only nine doctors and despite our best efforts, the manpower shortage continues to be hurdle in upgrading CHCs,” he said. He added soon a medical college at a distance of 10 km would come up at
Kichha.

Dehradun, June 8
President of the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (Panwar) Trivender Panwar has termed the current Assembly session as a waste of time and money. He said the state government called it a budget session while only 10 minutes were spared to clear the budget.

The UKD (P) is a coalition partner in the Congress-led state government.

Panwar rued that issues pertaining to public welfare, boycott of the session by a Congress MLA, insensitivity towards those protesting in support of their demands and negligible presence of the Chief Minister and others during the session were ignored.

He also drew attention towards forest fires in the state and said a loss of Rs 2,000 crore had been incurred in such incidents this year but the issue was not raised during the Assembly session. He demanded the issuance of a White Paper and stringent action against the erring forest officials in this regard.

Panwar said the UKD would hold a dharna in the city tomorrow in protest against the inability of the CBI to fight a strong case against Congress leader Suryakant Dhasmana in the Karnapur firing incident of October 3, 1994. Dhasmana was acquitted by a CBI court yesterday.

Panwar said his party would also protest on June 17 against a proposal to give rights to Bangladesh refugees to buy and sell land in the state. He added it was unfortunate that while such a right had been given to outsiders, natives of the state had been ignored. He stressed that the members of the Bengali community should not be confused with Bangladesh citizens.

The UKD (P) chief said a meeting of the executive committee of the party would be held in Gairsain on June 20. He added it was sad that the government first made a tall claim about holding a Cabinet meeting in Gairsain but later backtracked on its promise.

Dehradun, June 8
The Uttarakhand State Council of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) took an 18-member delegation to TATA Motors Ltd, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, Minda Corporation Ltd and Delphi-TVS Diesel Systems Ltd at the Pantnagar industrial complex today. The key objective of the visit was to learn the best manufacturing practices these companies were adopting that had made them leaders in their respective areas of work.

Nitin B Tilak, DGM, (Plant and Utility), shared the vision of the TATA group highlighting its values and ethics and briefed the visiting delegation on the high safety standards being adopted by the company to protect environment and people in and around the manufacturing facilities.

Tilak also talked about the good manufacturing practices adopted for excellence in manufacturing. He apprised the delegation about the Taikisha Paint Shop, which was the single largest paint shop in Asia. Ashutosh Varman, AGM, Administration and Corporate Social Responsibility, briefed the delegates on the TATA Motors Vendor Park at Pantnagar and how it was mutually beneficial for the vendors and the company. He said the vendor park on 337 acres and 66 vendors was the largest in the Indian auto industry.

At Mahindra and Mahindra, SK Dubey, plant head, talked about the values and vision of the Mahindra group. He spoke about the measures adopted by the plant to improve the overall productivity. Ashok Singh, DGM, Manufacturing, spoke about the lean organisation structure of the plant with all activities of production under one roof. He said the company strived to build and promote innovation culture at the plant by active employee engagement at all levels.

Sumit Doseja, plant head at Minda Corporation, gave an overview of the best manufacturing practices. He also apprised the delegates of how the company created value for all stakeholders through the Total Employee, Supplier and Customer Involvement programme.

Sudesh Sud, plant head at Delphi-TVS, spoke about the manufacturing processes of the company and how they had moved towards adopting the TPM approach that was helping them enhance production quality.

During the visit of delegation to each of these companies, ideas and thoughts were exchanged on all aspects of better management practices and systems.

Haridwar, June 8
After facing problems in managing regular festive baths, fairs, Kanwar mela and Maha Kumbh-Ardh along with problems of congested roads and encroachments by vendors-hawkers, finally the administration has started the process for a separate vending zone in Haridwar.

A high-level team comprising district administration and Municipal Corporation have been formed under City Magistrate JS Nagiyal in this regard, which will submit it's final report in the coming days to the District Magistrate.

A survey is being done in the city to earmark the place for vending zones as well as marking places as 'no-vending zone.' Under directions from District Magistrate Sachin Kurwe, an administrative team is doing a field survey of various markets and empty places for this purpose.

Initially, for vending zone the Municipal Corporation has marked 14 such places while eight zones have been understood to be made no-vending zones.

The team is taking inputs from street vendors with Uttarakhand chief of small scale street vendors-hawkers Sanjay Chopra, apprising the survey team of their suggestions and problems.

As per CO, Traffic, JR Joshi, the city needs to have specific vending zones as otherwise a majority of the streets in the core mela zone area leading towards Har-ki-Pauri are full of vendors, of which a majority are unauthorised, which poses problems for commuting and traffic jams.

Mussoorie, June 8
A bilingual documentary titled 'I Am Mussoorie' dedicated to tourists was released by eminent singer from the state, Meena Rana, at a simple function in Mussoorie today.

The documentary directed and produced by Pradeep Bhandari is in both Hindi and English and has been conceptualised in order to promote the lesser-known tourist destinations around Mussoorie that are still far away from the reach of the tourists.

The documentary begins with the history of the town and highlights the important tourist destinations such as Jharipani, Mossy and Bhatta Falls with prominence.

The chief guest on the occasion, Meena Rana, addressing the gathering said that the documentary film on Mussoorie was need of the hour for the tourists as now they will have no difficulty in locating the tourist places around Mussoorie. She further said that the documentary will prove to be a milestone in promoting tourism here.

The director-producer of the film, Pradeep Bhandari, informed the gathering that the tourists visiting Mussoorie are not provided with sufficient information about the main spots around the town; so it was decided to make this documentary CD, which will not only act as a guide book for them but also help in promoting tourism.

“Through this documentary the tourists will receive not only information about the important places but also the glorious history of the town," added Bhandari.

Sanjay Kumola and Meena Rana have provided the voice in the film, while Ajay Solanki and Pooja Nirankari have lent their artistic assistance to the film.

Pithoragarh, June 8
Municipal council workers have called off their 18-day strike in support of demand for salary and arrears, chairperson of the Almora Nagar Palika Shobha Joshi said here today.

“After meeting leaders of the employees it was decided that the municipal council would immediately pay salary for the last three months to its nearly 350 employees. Additional revenue sources would be searched to meet the demands of the employees,” said Joshi.

The town of Almora has become a garbage dump and even tourists coming to this cultural centre of the Kumaon region have to bear the brunt of the strike of the municipal workers. “This strike of municipal workers has badly affected hotel and restaurant business, besides the local market dependent on the sale of souvenir items. With garbage littered all around the tourists were leaving in a day or so to escape nauseating smell,” said Paramod Joshi, an hotelier of the town.

“We are not surprised at the strike but we are concerned about the unwholesome conditions in some localities due to the strike as sweepers of the nagar palika did not even clean streets near their area,” said PC Tiwari, an activist of the Uttarakhand Sangharsh Wahini.

The people of Almora are fed up with the agitation of the municipal workers and they believe the poor financial condition of the nagar palika will again force them to go on strike. “How a local body like the Almora Nagar Palika can meet salary bill of its employees when it needs more than Rs 1.5 crore more every year to meet its increasing routine expenses,” said Naveen Bisht, a senior journalist based in Almora.

“We have agreed to the proposal of the nagar palika to end our strike on a condition that it will pay the last three months’ salary to the employees. But if dues are not paid to us, we will resume the strike,” said Bhupendra Singh, president of the Municipal Employees Federation.

He said the nagar palika was yet to pay Rs 9.50 crore to the employees on account of the arrears of the Sixth Pay Commission and pension. “We have 258 regular and 78 contractual employees and the nagar palika needs Rs 4.44 crore every year to pay salaries to them. It does not have enough revenue to meet the salary bill,” said Bhupendra.

“Almora will see a scanty flow of tourists during the summer if the nagar palika does not provide basic facilities to them. We are already facing a drinking water shortage in tourist lodges and hotels of the town. The strike proved to be another hurdle in this direction as it happened during the peak tourist season. The nagar palika will have to set things right if it wants to attract more tourists to Almora town,” said Naveen
Bisht.

Dehradun, June 8
Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna today assured the House that a committee would be constituted for carrying out revision of minimum wages for workers working in industrial areas and these wages would be higher than all the states.

Intervening during question hour, Labour Minister Harish Chander Durgapal failed to satisfy the BJP MLA, Surinder Jeena, who wanted to know if the minimum wages being offered in Uttarakhand were set for revision.

The member was also told that the payment to daily wagers working in Transit Hostel , Secretariat and Assembly would be paid through cheques.

The Minister for Urban Development, Pritam Singh Panwar, today accepted the suggestion made by former Speaker and BJP MLA Harbans Kapoor that a process should be initiated whereby the cow dung is collected from dairies on the pattern of door-to-door collection of household garbage under way in the state. The member said such a provision would prevent the choking of drains as almost all the cow dung is thrown in the drains.

The minister said the Urban Development Department is working at a plan to shift some of the dairies to less congested places. "The plan that was chalked out in 2010 under maha yojana could not be implemented as the selection of land in Chakrata and Jogiwala proved problematic. Most of the dairies that are functioning in the city are being asked to keep these neat and clean. As there is no objection from the people, as long as these dairies were kept clean, there was no immediate plan to move them,” informed the minister.

Pithoragarh, June 8
The police in Almora and Pithoragarh has booked 70 women and registered cases against them under various sections of the IPC for obstructing traffic on highways to protest shortage of LPG cylinders, sources said.

According to information, the Almora police has registered cases against 40 women who were protesting the shortage of LPG by blocking traffic at Dugalkhola on the Haldwani-Pithoragarh road on Thursday. “The protesting women blocked the road from 8.30 am to 10 am, holding up vehicular traffic between Pithoragarh and Haldwani and causing inconvenience to the commuters,” said a police officer in Almora.

The Pithoragarh police also acted the same day and registered cases against women, for blockin the national highway No. 9 at Aincholi, demanding fair distribution of the cylinders. “The cases have been registered under sections 341,332 and 353 of the IPC after the driver of the truck carrying the load of LPG cylinders informed the police,” said the Pithoragarh police.

According to the information received from Bageswar district, the women from Mandalsera and Bahuli areas blocked the Kanda-Kausani road on Thursday, demanding immediate supply of LPG cylinders. “If we do not get cylinders soon, we will resort to day-long blockade of the road,” said Nema Dhapola, a woman protester in the Mandalsera area of Bageswar district.

Fed up with the non-delivery of LPG cylinders from the last 3 months, the women from Garur area of Bageswar district have warned the administration that they will have to resort to blockade at Garur town if the cylinders are not delivered to them in two days time.

Dehradun, June 8
Shobha Devi, wife of Ram Kumar, a labourer from Bihar, was killed by her husband at night at their house at Balawala in Raipur. Kumar, in an inebriated state, killed his wife on a provocation with some sharp-edged weapon. He is absconding since night. The police has handed over his three little children to a relative of Kumar.

Boy goes missing

A 16-year-old boy Rohit Rana, resident of Bhaniawala at Doiwala went, has gone missing since June 3 after his father Virender Singh Rana scolded him for coming late home at night. His father, who filed an FIR today, tried to search him at his relatives' and friends' places but after failing in his attempt, he finally lodged a complaint with the Doiwala police.